


Loved, Lost, Learned

by ElwritesFanworks



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Backstory, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Falling In Love, Fatherhood, Feels, Fertility Issues, Grief/Mourning, Headcanon, Love, Marriage, Married Couple, Married Life, Married Sex, Miscarriage, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pregnancy, Rating May Change, Romance, Self-Worth Issues, Spoilers, Unplanned Pregnancy, hospitality, more pairings may come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-11 08:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5620891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElwritesFanworks/pseuds/ElwritesFanworks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles/random moments in the life of Sole Survivor Donald Delaney as he navigates life after the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shawn

**Author's Note:**

> I actually caved and bought an Xbox so I can play Fallout 4. I have no regrets - it's worth every penny. It's good to be home in my favorite game 'verse once again.
> 
> Also, my Sole Survivor and the wife are older than typical. Middle aged. I thought it'd make losing Shawn all the more traumatic if he'd been conceived in their later years.
> 
> Lastly, when Don says Legion, think 'place soldiers and veterans go' not 'New Vegas flashbacks.' It's not that kind of Legion. ;P

* * *

Nora was the best woman Don had ever known. Sweet and motherly, but clever and independent too – the perfect combination of domestic goddess and strong female with a firm handshake that had left the veteran shaking in his boots when they’d first met. It’d taken three shots of the hard stuff and the cajoling of his army buddies to get him to ask her to dance, and she’d looked at him like she was going to eat him alive. She must’ve seen something in him, though – she swore later on that it was his eyes she liked the best – because she’d left her school friends at the bar and took the ex-soldier for a spin.

At first, he’d been coy with her – so much so that she teased him about having cold feet. It was only after two months of circling her like a wary dog that he admitted he was ashamed of being seen with her.

“You’re a law student – top of your class. I’m just a grunt with hair gray like an old man's and nothing to do now but get drunk at the Legion every night.”

Nora had looked at him with such kindness that it had all but broken his heart.

“You’re a good egg, Donald Delaney,” she’d said. “What girl doesn’t love a soldier? And your hair’s handsome – it makes you look distinguished.”

That night, she’d asked him to stay for coffee, and then a little bit more than coffee, too.

When they married, Don didn’t think he could be any happier. He’d been proved wrong when Nora announced she was expecting – Cogsworth had gone nuts getting the house ready for the baby. They’d picked out names. Shawn for a boy. Suzy for a girl.

She lost it – a girl, they found out – in the third trimester. It nearly destroyed them both. Don had reacted by retreating, suppressing his feelings like a real man, focusing on protecting the family he had left. He was terrible at it, though, and Nora had found him, drunker than he’d ever been, sobbing into a pink baby blanket that had never seen use. She’d cradled him like a child, rocked him, kissed him, and asked him if he loved her.

More than anything, he’d said.

“Good,” she said. “Then this won’t break us.”

Four more times they tried. Four more times they’d gotten their hopes up only to have them smashed. The sex took on a desperate edge as they got older, as the cruel passage of time made it less and less likely that they would conceive. Until one afternoon, in the summer. Don’s chest was still heaving, his mind still fuzzy, and Nora had turned to him. She’d looked every bit her age, her once-supple body now sagging in places, her skin more freckled and creased, a sort of weariness about her that Don felt in himself as well.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met,” Don said, and meant every word. “I wish I could… I mean. We never got the chance to –”

“If we never have kids, I won’t regret it. I won't regret marrying you,” Nora replied softly, thoughtful and sincere. “You’re the light of my life, Donnie. You’re all I need.”

Shawn had been an accident, conceived, Don swore, on the first night they’d made love without the pressure of trying to get pregnant. They’d just fooled around like newlyweds, laughed and talked and held each other, and aspired to nothing greater than to share a moment of joy together. Their love, he'd insist later, had finally been enough.

Nora often said that Shawn had his father's eyes. Maybe so, Don would agree, but he had her smile. And he had all the love two parents could ever give.


	2. Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feels ;_;
> 
> I couldn't scrap the crib.  
> I think Don is torn in that he hopes his son is still alive but is also preparing himself for the worst, having just lost everything else.

* * *

Don puts the settlers – Garvey and the rest – up in his old house in Sanctuary. There are better locations, maybe. He doesn’t really look around more than he has to for scavenging. He knows when they arrive that he has to put them up in his home – just like he would’ve done, before…

He doesn’t feel anything when he walks into the place he lived in, two centuries ago. It’s like a dream. Strange – familiar, but not right. He doesn’t cry when he breaks down his chairs and the furniture in the master bedroom, when he takes the best from his neighbors’ houses and decorates for his guests. Raise their spirits, he imagines Nora saying. She’d be serving cheese and crackers, and sparkling punch, like in the old days. Don is, for a moment, grateful she’s gone. _She would’ve hated to see the house in such a state,_ he thinks. He nearly cries, then, because it’s a stupid thing to think.

He’d give anything to have her back.

He leaves Shawn’s room for last because he can’t stomach being there. Still, there could be things of value, and he needs the space. He looks at the rotting blue carpet, at the crib, at the remains of the mobile. His cheeks are wet as he tears what he can from the rug. He stuffs the moldy fabric into a makeshift mattress. These people need a place to sleep. They deserve that, after all they’ve gone through.

He can’t scrap the crib. Instead, he clears a spot in what had been his laundry room, and stows it there. He finds a toy car, a block, a baby bottle – little bits and pieces of his old life. He places them in the crib like a shrine.

If the others notice it that night – and they must, in moving into the two newly-furnished bedrooms – they don’t say anything about it – don’t enter in and destroy the sanctity of the small, silent space of mourning. They don’t follow Don when he goes to the room after dinner and stands over the crib, head bowed.

When he shuts his eyes and reaches out, he can almost imagine Shawn reaching back, catching hold of his finger in fat, little hands. He sags against the furniture in grief and the grief remains when he walks across the hall and goes to bed.

When he wakes the next morning from a fitful sleep, the first place he goes, after a quick jaunt to the end of his yard to piss, is Shawn’s Shrine, as he’s decided to call it. Just to check on it. Just to make sure it’s still there.

What he finds is a shock to him. Flowers – fresh flowers from God knows where – anonymously left inside the crib.

He doesn’t ask which settler has done it. He doesn’t need to know. It is enough to know that someone did. It is enough to know he still has some sort of family after all.


End file.
